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Best Be Paying Attention!

World of Warcraft, Patch 5.3 has arrived.

I’ve been focusing most of my efforts on running the Burning Crusade raids that can now drop pets.

I was super-excited the first night of the patch. I ran Karazhan, and in the Opera event, Barnes started talking about not believing your eyes. Yay! Big Bad Wolf! I might have a chance at the Lil Bad Wolf pet first time it’s up!

Well, I did have a chance, and yes the pet dropped. Wow, right? First week?

I began to suspect something was wrong when the Curator dropped a pet. And then so did Illhoof.

Oh, shit, is this bugged? Is Blizzard going to take my pets away because the thing was bugged out and giving pets every time?

On the other hand, what if it IS bugged out, and they don’t take pets away? No sleep ’till Machie!

I’ll kill the suspense here, it turns out it wasn’t bugged, in that and four more runs, I haven’t seen the pet from Prince, or from any other boss again. It was only that first golden run that was blessed, and I’ll gladly take it and treasure my good fortune.

In fact, I consider this whole ‘pets in old raids’ thing a massive success, because I’ve seen several people on my friends list announce they’ve gotten the Ashes of A’lar on runs in The Eye, Elizabella of the Epic Questions podcast and the Elizabella Chronicles to name one you likely know, and I can’t help but think it’s the incentive of going in and getting pets that is encouraging people to go back in there again after all these years. Well played, Blizzard. Well played.

Blizzard has sure succeeded in getting my butt out there to do stuff I normally wouldn’t solo. With the addition of pets, I went out to SSC, The Eye and Karazhan, and for the first time I really tried to solo the end bosses of each. Well, in the case of Kara, soloing Chess.

The only real stumbling block I had in soloing anything was the Chess event. Kael’thas and Lady Vashj are now quite soloable, no RNG at all.

I tried zerging the enemy King in Chess my first night, and it didn’t go so well. Sure, I can solo 25 person raid bosses, but a damn Chess match…

Um, okay. And of course, it worked flawlessly, and after adopting the Tikari Tactic I soloed Chess three more times in a row. Or four, I’ve lost count. If anything, now that we’re post the 5.3 nerfs, Tikari’s guide works better than ever before.

While I’ve been running old raids, Cassie has been doing some of the new scenarios.

She decided to break out her Priest and run the new Blood in the Water scenario for the quest chain, and found something that was a great wake-up call.

She queues for it and gets two strangers in the group, someone running as a healer, and a Warrior that Cassie described as “the squishiest Warrior I’ve ever seen”.

On a personal note, I truly hate running scenarios with people there as dedicated healers, players who insist on only healing. It’s one thing to be a Smite-spec Priest doing damage and incidental healing on the side, or any other healing spec that is also firing off some damage once in a while. What I don’t need is you walking around behind me, tossing overhealing on my already topped-off bar, while I do all the killing. The scenario mechanics give you healing options if you need them, all you are is a boat anchor slowing us down. It’s one of the reasons I prefer doing scenarios with friends, if we’re gonna do it, let’s just do it without wondering why that jackass is standing there looking cute with a whopping zero DPS.

So Cassie runs the scenario, it takes a bit with only two people contributing to kill all the trolls, but they get through it. They downed Hekima in the final battle, get the Hekima’s Heal-Halter achievement…

And the Warrior and healer drop group, first the Warrior and then about 30 seconds later the healer, leaving Cassie all alone with the scenario unfinished.

The other two players apparently saw the Achievement spam for killing Hekima, thought that that was the ‘Scenario complete’ spam, and dropped group!

Cassie had to kill the rest of the group of bad guys all by herself, but you know, she took care of that little task, all the while shaking her head in amazement. She was still shaking her head in disbelief when she told me about it minutes later.

How do you fight that far in a scenario, only to drop group the second you think you won without, like, checking? I know I’d wait at least a few seconds to make sure, oh wait, I DID wait a few seconds, because I saw the achievement spam the first time I did it and thought, “What a strange place for an achievement, we’re still fighting, we ain’t done yet.”

Again, well played, Blizzard. By putting the Hekima achievement where it is, you’ve just made sure that anyone running these without actually paying attention is apt to get a surprise. A big surprise.

It’s a classic example of someone who didn’t have the time to finish the rest of the fight, but they’re gonna have to find time to run the whole damn thing over again, now aren’t they?

Sneaky, Blizzard.

I guess maybe next time those two should stay and pay attention to all of the lore and storytelling Blizzard took the time to put in the damn game, huh?

What, do they think Blizzard is programming all of this for their health? That’ll teach ’em.

So, what have been your favorite things to come out of Patch 5.3 so far?

Yeah I have to disagree with you on healers in scenarios mate. IMO, with scenarios you just match your playstyle to your group. 3 squishy dps? You pull small numbers and burn them down fast before anyone gets hurt. Decent dps and a healer? Pull medium numbers and aoe them down. Tank and healer plus a dps? PULL EVERYTHING IN SIGHT! Some of my fastest scenarios have been with a healer, because rather than working our way through the mobs we pull as many as we can and make use of the healing.

Now this isn’t always possible is every scenario, some of them have timed releases of mobs that come out bit by bit, but generally you adjust to your group composition and do it however it works best for that group.

Heroic scenarios with 3 dps are ludicrously fun. Gotta dodge all the fire, gotta get creative with stuns and snares and CC and offhealing, and you get a mountain of VP for the first one. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve been able to play a paladin as a real hybrid in PvE (some tanking and taunting and some offheals, while ret specced).

As a man with a max level of each healing class, I’ll have to disagree agree somewhat with your take on healers. I’ve been brought into several H Scenarios and all have been fun and I’ve always been able to find a way to mix in a little bit of DPS in with my heals. That being said, a healer’s main job is to make sure that you don’t die while doing all the DPS you can. If my GF (Rogue) and I are running a Scenario together, there’s a very real chance that we’ll do quicker and better damage to other mobs if she doesn’t have to watch the fire so close and can get in that last combo hit due to my heals than we would with me as Feral. This is in no small part to the fact that I’m not that good as Feral.

Don’t misread that as approval of someone standing in the fire. Nor am I condoning throwing a Rejuv up and going to grab a sandwich, as there are plenty of ways to heal and DPS simultaneously in those. Just giving a taste of the other side.

/soapbox

As for what I like in 5.3…I’m actually really digging the decreased required XP. I’ve already gotten two toons up the rest of the way to 90 and it actually has me excited to go back and build up their farms, which will feed into fixing my horrid Blacksmithing. Very good for alts indeed!

I understand your sentiment about healers in scenarios, Bear. However, as two of my three max level characters(Druid, Priest, Pally tank) are straight up healers with level 85 offspec gear, I do tend to run them as heals. In these cases, though, I have the decency to either run with guildies or to tell the other two in the group that all I can do is heal and to feel free to put the pressure on me by pulling everything in sight. Good times can still be had if the healer is friendly. Remember, some of us simply want to heal because it’s all we’re good at.

I will say, if you’re doing Heroic Scenarios without a “tank” (hunter pet, warlock glyph or actual tank) and a “healer”, it’ll be brutal. I’ve yet to beat the timer on the bonus though… but then, the overall DPS on the two times I’ve run them has been on the low end of just enough.

Honestly, one of my favorite parts of 5.3 are some of the looting/tagging things they’ve implemented for the Battlefield: Barrens! quests.

Not only do all party members get to loot supplies from every kill, but when the commanders spawn, it doesn’t matter which faction tags it. Horde and Alliance get to work together to kill those guys, and then everyone involved gets loot. I teamed up with a couple of friends to do the weekly version of the resource gathering quest (they gathered for the initial one and the weekly all at once to save time), and we found that a lot of the mobs spawned so quickly we didn’t have to budge from our chosen spots.

Additionally, the mojo you get for the weekly quest can be used to buy a little blue hydra pet! *squee* 😀

Oh, and if you haven’t taken the Old Seer quest from Chen out there in the Barrens, it’s a fun little quest with some neat lore and 502 boots as a reward.

IIRC, there’s another achievement in the Blood in the Snow scenario – “Heed the Weed”, which requires that all the healing buffs (those weed things, can’t recall their name atm) are picked up/used during the scenario.

And as for my first run with that scenario, no issues – got in with my Paladin, along with a DK and a Shaman, and we tore the place apart pretty much untouched. Killed Hekima last (DK aggroed and tanked him while me and the Shaman cleared the other mobs) and got both Heal-halter and scenario complete achievements.